Sir Richard Grey
Second son of Elizabeth Woodville. Born in the same year as Henry Tudor (1457) and by 1483, half brother to both Princes in the Tower.
Before she met and married Edward IV, Elizabeth had been married to Sir John Grey who was killed at 2nd St Albans (1461). Her mother-in-law had married a new, young, Yorkist husband and granted him a life interest in estates that Richard’s elder brother Thomas was due to inherit. Elizabeth petitioned her distant kinsman, William Lord Hastings, to help her protect Thomas’s inheritance and in April 1464 agreed that Thomas would marry Hastings’ (yet to be born) daughter in exchange, or Richard if Thomas had died. It was possibly during these negotiations that Edward IV first met and fell in love with Elizabeth.
At age eighteen Richard was knighted and was given minor administrative roles mainly in Wales. His career was developing at a fast rate when in 1482 he joined his uncle Anthony and his half brother Edward at Ludlow, just a year before the crisis of the succession. He was arrested by Richard of Gloucester along with his uncle Earl Rivers (30 April 1483) and both were executed at Pontefract (June 1483) .
IWF